O for Orkut

Google has a company policy which allows its engineers "20 percent time" in which they're free to pursue personal projects which aren't necessarily related to their official assignments.
This according to Google creates a healthy environment for creativity to prosper.
Of course our Indian companies need not come up with such policies as we already spend around 35% of our time in office on our personal interests and an additional 45% on that of our colleagues'.

Anyway one of the employees of Google made use of this time to create a networking site which he not very modestly named after himself Orkut.
Thankfully he chose to leave out his surname Büyükkökten from the address of the site as having to type in the text www.orkutBüyükkökten.com each time to log into a socialising and networking site would have soon led many to severe demophobia and chronic depression.

Soon after the public release of the site, it was alleged by his previous employer, Affinity Engines, that he had created something similar while he was working in their company and they filed a lawsuit against Google claiming that the code of Orkut was infact theirs.
Rumours have it that Google pulled a few strings here and there, bribed a few judges, kidnapped a handful of relatives of the CEO of Affinity Engines and thus amicably settled the lawsuit out of court.
It is such gentlemanly behaviour of these large companies that must truly be appreciated.

Orkut surely has come a long way since then.
In early April 2007, the number of users having an Orkut profile was over 49 million, majority of whom hail from Brazil and India- two visionary countries who are contemplating laws which would soon make it a criminal offence for its citizens to not have an orkut account.

Nowadays in our Hindi film industry, they do not anymore make movies of the type of "Yaadon ki Baarat" (The Bridegroom's party of Memories) where 3 brothers, separated at childhood recognise each other and finally reunite after around 20 years by singing that common song which their composer and lyricist mother had so affectionately taught them just minutes before she was shot dead by masked dacoits. So ecstatically did they come running to embrace each other after thorough mutual verification of the lyrics from a distance that one would have to be a true stone-hearted demon or an employee of my company to not shed a tear at this emotional reunion.
(While true stone-hearted demons do not cry, we in our company exhaust all our tears on the days we get our salary.)

In one of the other masterpieces, the elder brother takes a very difficult vow to never have anything to do with water again as he had been separated from his kid brother while he had gone to fetch some drinking water for him !!
No wonder that they named that movie Haath ki Safai or Cleanliness of the Hands.
(See, tissues never really caught the fancy of the Indian public.)

Anyway Orkut addresses such potential hardships brilliantly.

No longer do you have to rely on songs and fortune to find your long lost loved ones. A simple search in Orkut is all that you need, for there is rarely anyone who does not have a profile page in Orkut today.
What accounts for its huge popularity is probably the concept of open profiles where anyone and everyone can browse and read your personal messages, take a peek at your photo albums and drop in their own messages as well.
(No Ma, they cannot wash my dishes and do the cooking for me.)

This unique opportunity to discreetly invade the privacy of other people under the pretension of socializing was too good to let go. Quite naturally you would come across many known faces while carelessly wandering around here and there.

There are many kinds of characters that you would meet in this wonderfully interesting forum some of which are discussed below:

The Evolutionary kind:
Do you faintly remember that fat kid from junior school who used to fervently dig his nose with all his ten fingers as if in anticipation of excavating some gold from there? He is there in orkut and has pictures with a lady so beautiful that you would want to go back to those days and dig his nose for him, for maybe just an introduction with her.

The Missed-the-boat kind:
The doe-eyed girl who gave you those coyish and inviting looks in your tuition class but whom you could never manage to ask out is also there. You look at her album and there is a wonderful photograph where she is seen hugging a cute chimpanzee in a beach in Pattaya.
While you are admiring her love for wildlife, a small caption below the photograph saying 'Me and my cho chweet husband' would affect your attention momentarily.

The Friends:
This extremely interesting creed is in abundance in orkut. Frustration is given a new dimension by this junta. All you need is a name resembling a female and if you have a picture as well then you are done for.
The brigade would march up in full force to pay their respects.
Some actual extracts are jotted below.

First Stage:
Scrap - "hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii girl king wanna ur freind"

Scrap - "I know I m stranger 4 u.may b u have some problem to b my friend.
I think friendship is the word which introduce two strangers and bond them in a lovely relation called “FRIENDSHIP”."
(Wow did anyone know this about friendship???)

Scrap - "hi.how are you ya.i am dude from Kurnool no.i want to be your friend ya.
if you agree than
........plzzz reply me
else if dont agree than
........also plzz reply me ya
else I sorry no.
(Syntax Error: Endif statement Missing !!! And is this guy from Kurnool or not ?)

Intermediate Stage
Scrap - "Why no reply...am I not coal?
(No,you are bitumin and tar my friend... why restrict yourself to just coal!)

Scrap - "I think I have wastting my time,by disturbing you.........
anyways,if you can`t reply......delete your self."
(Just how exactly does one delete oneself ????)

Final stage
My personal favourite in this category is this one

Scrap - "wat a person u r guess i pitty.................to the guy...........................anways wats up ........................???"
(Last ditch efforts by attacking the ego I guess)

And did I read somewhere that Orkut is an old Turkish word that means city of happiness, pleasure, joy and luck ?????

There is then this concept of communities where a group of people with some common interests get together to share and discuss views on a common platform.
So we have varied communities like Funny incidents in Dentistry (2,559 members), I hate Greg Chappel (2,885 members), Down with Apostrophe Abus'e! (721 members), A Glass of water (5,653 members), Alcohol improves my english (4,059 members), George Bush´s Penis (853 members !!!!), Men are big pigs! (109 members ), Why are girls so dumb? (1,855 members), This Is Not A Community (65,938 members) and so on.

Indeed this is a motley and colourful congregation here and for people like me who are reluctantly social,this site is just the answer to our prayers.
No more do you have to go through lengthly telephone calls or emails to get to the point.
Scrapping is the new Mantra !!!
"Hi wanna frenship ?"

Felis Silvestris Catus -II

The IIMs are always in the national news.
If its not about a 22 year old fresher plucking out all the nostril hairs of the 42 year old bum who got the Rs.38 lacs/annum job offer while he could only manage a Rs.8 lac one, it has to be about some over-enthusiastic house-fly which managed to land itself in some soup or the other there.

Recently ofcourse the OBC quota issue has hogged most of the liimlight.
With the government of India being made to pull their ears and do sit-ups by the Supreme Court on this issue, the IIM administration is at a loss again.
Though the institutes have complete autonomy on most issues of the college like deciding on who the milkman will be in the hostels ; for some insignificant policy decisions like student admissions they are bound to follow what Mrs Phulki Debi, the 89 year old deaf mother-in law of the minister of state for Tribal affairs, hallucinates on Saturday evenings.

The journey of the management-aspirants till this stage is briefly touched upon here.

The two of you who read my blogs may remember that I left my discussion on this exam process here when this crowd of MBA aspirants gets demarkated into two categories.
One who would sleep peacefully for the next 4 months and the other who would not.

For this group of Jawans, once the euphoria of the written results has passed away and Chunnu ki Ma has been to his house 4 times reminding his mother of how fortunate she was to have borne a magnificent child like him, the reality of the task ahead would slowly dawn upon him.
There is still a group discussion and personal interview in a months time where a panel of usually three nutty professors play chinese checkers and the one who loses gets to bang the heads of the other two. After 3 hours of this activity, they come to take the interviews.

Pagalguy.com, an online mental institution camouflaged as a web portal provides just the kind of platform that the Jawans need to prepare for this stage of the admission process.

Stage 1- Preparation
Forums have topics as below :
First timers :
1. Can I wear my favourite Orange and Yellow shirt to the interview ....please ? (26 replies)
2. Are we allowed to pull the hairs of and claw at other candidates in a Group discussion ? (454 replies)
Veterans:
3. Hey Rocker, is Prof Jagadish Murthy in the panel for Mumbai this time ? (8 replies)
Moderators:
4. IIM Calcutta has not issued any directive that all interview takers will need to take a bath with Margo soap only before coming for the interview. As last year it was Margo and Hamaan so we have no reason to think that this has changed this time.
(Members spreading such wrong information will be banned permanently. Ha ha !)
5. Pschyometric tests if any, will not test whether you are insane. So you're safe.
6. There would be invigilators from the HRD ministry in the interview halls to see that there is no discrimination being done on the basis of your nose-picking habits and belching disorders or even the length of your footnails.

Stage 2 - GD and Interviews
New thread added at 3 a.m. in the morning some hours before the first interview :
Veterans
Prof. Mule , Prof Mukherjee alongwith Prof Khandelwal's pet dog were seen in the airport today evening.Man we are done for this time !! Please post your GD and interview experiences asap.
New thread added at 5.14 a.m. in the morning some hours before the first interview :
First Timers
Urgent. Hello Please post your GD and interview experiences asap.My bowels are jamming.
New thread added at 6.03 a.m. in the morning some hours before the first interview :
First Timers
Very urgent.Hello Please post your GD and interview experiences asap.I think I will faint.

This goes on till we have some frustrated software engineer sitting in his client location in Japan jotting down 'his' GD and personal interview experiences.

Hi,
My interview and GD went quite well I think.
The GD topic was " When will Arjun Sing ?"

There were a lot of civilized discussions and when the the third sonofabitch and the F-word was heard , Prof Mule (the shorter one) let loose Prof Khandelwal's dog amongst us and sanity prevailed.

My interview was even better infact:
Prof Mukherjee - Surname ?
I- Mishra.
Prof Mule: Are there any places where we can take Prof Khandelwal's dog for his potty ?
I - Yes sir there is the Gateway of India which was built to commemorate the visit of King George V and Queen Mary and was built between 1911 -1924.
Prof Mule - ok ok...how far is it ?
I- Sir would you need it in foot, meters,yard or furlongs ?
Prof Khandelwal's dog (clearly under pressure) - Gnarl Gnarl !!!
I- 10 mins walk Sir.
Prof Mule - Say something about Terrain Contour Matching Navigation system and Digital Scene-Mapping Area Correlator used in cruise missiles .
I- Can I take the dog out for the walk instead sir ?
Prof Mule-Yes you may and that will be all. you may go now. Thank you.

I- Sir can we do this one more time please ?
Prof Mukherjee - Surname ?
I- Lumbeechu
Prof Mule- Hello my son . How are you today ?
I- Not too bad...kind of hot in here ..
Prof Mukherjee - Would you like some tea or coffee, my son ?
I- Beer would be good !
Prof Mule to Prof Khandelwal's dog - Go get Beer !!
Prof Mule - So what does your father do, my son...?
I- He is the Additional District Collector of Hingoli district.
Prof Mukherjee - Oh how unfair !! Such discrimination in this 21st century. Unthinkable.
Prof Mule - You must have had a very oppressed childhood isn't it with no proper schooling and means of expressing your natural self ?
I- Yes indeed so, The dean of the Doon school in Dehradun was a real pain in the ass at times you know. He didn't allow us to stage the play titled "Say of the Gay".
Prof Mukherjee - Ahem...Indeed such disbalance and disparity in the society must be done away with immediately.
Prof Mule- Son , can you name 2 of your subjects from class 12 ?
I- Yeah sure Physics and Sociology
Prof Mukherjee - Excellent Excellent.
Prof Mule- Its really an honour to have you in our institute. If you wish, you can join the campus placements right away. We have forced the Lehman Brothers to reserve their offers for such exceptionally talented people like you, who have been so unjustly held back in their march to progress by unscrupulous meritorious candidates.
Prof Mukherjee- Yes yes Down with merit.
Prof Khandelwal's dog - Woof Woof !!

Stage 3 - The Wait
This is the most familiar phase for the Jawans. Anyone who has been to an engineering college would know how to react when he hears "Semester results are to be declared this evening".
If its the first time he hears it, it usually means that the professor has just received the answer sheets and is waiting for the inevitable annual visit of his wife's now 9-year old nephew to whom he will give them to be corrected.
Aakhir Sale ke bachche hote kisliye hain .

Around the 34th time when an engineer hears that results are to be declared that day, does he walk upto the administrative building and gets to see his results. I remember mine in the 4th semester which came with some additional inputs from my professors:

Subject 1 - Marks 41 ---"A half-eaten Parle-G buscuit is not considered as bribe to the examiner these days."
Subject 2 - Marks 36 ---"Beta nikal gaye haath se isbaar."
Subject 3 - Marks 38 --- "Sexual intercourse is not the answer I was looking at to the question 'Give a few examples of Heat and Mass transfer reactions .' "
Subject 4 - Marks 45 --- "Illustrate Carnot cycle does not mean drawing a Carrot plant and a Tobu cycle beside it."
Subject 5 - Marks 54 --- "Shit, Pee and Fart" are not examples of solid, liquid and gaseous micronutrient fertilizers."
Subject 6 - Marks 48 -- "Expecto Patronum ,Expelliarmus and Crucio are still not the steps in a Acid/base Oxidation-Reduction titration."
Ah those were the days when the professors really cared for you !

Anyway coming back to the subject at hand, our group of Jawans now expectantly wait for April 21st, the date announced by the IIMs when Mrs.Phulki Debi is expected to have her next set of hallucinations.

Wishing them all the best in this endeavour to be a manager.

World Cup --- Chapter !

My highest score in cricket during my 20 years of glittering playing career is a remarkable 12 which I scored against a very strong bowling opposition of three girls, two of whom bowled underarm while the third attempted to bowl over arm with an action and expressions similar to that of a drowning project manager who apart from not knowing how to swim, suddenly remembers during those last frantic moments that he has not yet applied for the reimbursement of the canteen bill for yesterday's dinner and has also forgotten to disapprove the leave plans of Mahesh and Aniruddha and approve that of Ragini and Jyothika.

As far as my bowling is concerned, although I may not have taken wickets that regularly (a lifespan being a unit of my regularity), but I assure you that I am quite a terror with a cricket ball in my hand.
Strangely, after a pretty decent runup for a person with my degree of lankiness, once out of my hand, the ball attains a brain of its own with an uncanny desire to epitomise Camus' abstruse philosophy of The Rebel. If I aim the ball at the stumps, it usually reaches the second slip (full toss) and if direction is not a cause for rebellion on a day, then the ball usually soars just 5 feet above the stumps....Barely missing them, a cynical reporter would say but we sportsmen do not usually react to media reports as it affects our performance.
During one such flight of one of my deliveries, the late nature poet William Wordswoth appeared and parting the clouds, sonorously recited the following lines dedicating them to my ball.***

"Ethereal minstrel! pilgrim of the sky!
Dost thou despise the earth where cares abound?"
***(I mean the cricket ones...you naughty one)

Anyway without sounding too pompous (psst..I have held 3 catches also ....okay 2), I would delve on the news piece which caught my attention today.

The Board of Cricket Control of India is truly a master when it comes to understanding the game of cricket and the concerns of our often run-parched, performance-dry and advertisement-hungry national cricketers.

It was announced today that a team of National Security Commandoes who provide Z-category security to our politicians (to avoid being lynched by the common man) , alongwith a Bomb Disposal squad would accompany the cricketers during their month long all-expenses paid vacation to the Carribeans which some senior members have been told also coincides with the World Cup dates !!!!
Some players have of course voiced their displeasure at this odd coincidence and while squarely blaming Jagmohan Dalmiya for this fiasco are suggesting having a relook at their contracts once they come back from their vacation. Their argument is plain and simple : No one works during vacations apart from Indian software engineers.

The Ministry of External Affairs have said that the commandoes will accompany the players everywhere they go.
I mean, isn't this streching it a bit too far? Was this really necessary ?
We understand that the BCCI is aware of the level and kind of performance that this team will dish out and thus is naturally bent on taking all necessary precautions for the safety of the players.
For if they are harmed, who will wear those Nike T-Shirts and on whose underwear will Sahara print its logo and pay an additional Rs.10 cr for that must-display clause in the contract.
We completely understand and empathise with the BCCI's cause and concerns but commandoes and Bomb Disposal squads?
When Salman Khan can live without fear in India after genocidal performances in movies like Hello Brother,Lucky and Maine Pyar Kyon Kiya to name a few, what fear should Indian cricketers have ?
We Indians have accepted failure and mediocrity as a way of our lives isn't it so why bother.

This is a complete waste of money I think, just like the Rs.4,680 crore provision allocated for the Rajiv Gandhi National Drinking Water commission and the Rs.720 crore allocated for the Rural Sanitation Campaign in the Union Budget of 2007-2008.
While the money in the first Drinking Water scheme would attempt to quench the undying thirst of a few party workers of the late Prime Minsiter whose name adorns the scheme, the second would of course be used in such a manner that the Finance Minister will have to allocate more funds under the same head of Sanitation next year to clean the filth resulting from the misuse of the funds in this year.This is cyclical and we Indians accept this.
Similarly I am sure sending out Black Cat commandoes with the cricket team too is unnecessary and a sheer wastage of the taxpayer's money.

On seeking the opinion of a few members of the side on this latest development their reaction were as follows :

Rahul Dravid : "Ya ,the boys are performing well now and we are confident that we will beat Bermuda.......The commandoes can come back during the Super 8 stage. Great to have Ganguly back in the side."

Sachin Tendulkar : "Ya, I mean its fine you know. Well ah yes....I can use one commando as my runner you know. Ha ha..."
"He can open fire when I am given out. Sharad Pawar has told me so. Great to have Ganguly back in the side."

Anil Kumble: "No comments" ....(Thinking )...."If I bribe 3 of them and get them to frighten Chappel, then maybe I can get to play the Bermuda game. ...Do they tap thoughts too these days? "

Virendra Sehwag : "Mere pass Ma hain ............"

Greg Chappel :(Shouting) "Well it'll be tough to beat the Australians with just bats and balls and 4 pairs of 33+ year old legs. Why don't you try to coach such a team without black cat commandoes..Huh"
Just as the cameraman raised his right hand to adjust the lens Chappel toned down taking him to be another Oriya slapper and added,
"We are open to ideas from all quarters which positively impact Indian cricket. Please don't get emotional.Great to have Ganguly back in the side."

Irfan Pathan: "Are you kidding me ? Do I have an option ? Vengsarkar Sahib has asked 4 of them to particularly point their guns at me when I am on the field."

Sourav Ganguly : "Ha ha ha ha ha .....Ha ha ha ha"...(Dancing like Mamta Kulkarni did in Karan Arjun and singing.......)........"Jai Ma Kali"
Sreesanth, Uthappa and Dinesh Karthik forming the rest of the dancing troupe.

Wishing the Indian team with all the best of luck for the World Cup.
They would need loads of it, to live upto even half the expectation of the Pakistanis.

An English fHairy Tale

I have never really been much of a haircut-friendly person.Infact I loathed them when I was a kid.
It was always a Sunday when I was virtually dragged out of the house and placed in charge of Tultulda, an otherwise very friendly acquaintance, who used to coax and cajole me to the dreaded saloon, often with grossly unfair means such as Amul Milk Chocolates.

All this, to make me sit on a queer chair with a curious looking Y shaped stick behind it which gently rested your head in its cusp while a heartless and shameless barber would meticulously gnaw away any remnants of a human look which you might have acquired since the last visit to his place.
Haircuts always left me very bruised mentally and an uncanny sensation of being without clothes in the street, lingered on for at least a week after the cut.

We usually had mutton as Sunday lunch which partially drowned my grief while Didi came up with sympathetic consolations of the kind that I should actually rejoice, knowing that the relatively less frontal tapering of my face clearly still distinguished me from porcupines and skunks.
After all what are elder sisters for!

The hair butchers charged Rs.5 for each such unwanted service then.
The last hair cut I had, cost me a whopping Rs.860.

No, Shilpa Shetty has not yet adopted me (inspite of me being able to pronounce her name correctly) nor was I under any vow for the past 13 years which disallowed any creature of the barber species to lay hands on my precious locks and thus my hair were not really celebrating any kind of Jata Sammelan which should have necessitated such an atrocious sum of money to have them dispersed.

It just happens that I am still in the United Kingdom where the creatively deranged are usually rehabilitated by the government and made barbers, who thus naturally charge such exhorbitant rates to showcase their art on our heads.

A haircutting session is usually a big occasion for us desi folks here.
A lot of planning goes into the event.Phone calls are made,discount deals are fished, appointments are taken. On D-Day which usually still is a weekend, we book cabs, often forsake lunch and sleep and all this, to again sit on another queer looking chair with another forky Y protruding behind it with all its devilry intact....
"Come child , if not be a son of Satan ,atleast look like one" written all over it.

The barbers here are much meaner than their counterparts back in India, to the extent that they have categorised inhuman looks into simple Roman numerals. 1,2,3,4 ...You just gotta pick your number and lo behold in less than 3 minutes you can look at yourself in the mirror and guffaw away at the creature in front of you.....so agonisingly trying to look human.

Human beings try to demarkate themselves from other animals in a lot of curious ways.
Not only are humans one of a kind in their ability to convert every season into a mating season by simple mental titillations but they are also the only in the animal kingdom with an uncanny fetish to cut their hair.
For the majority of the male kind, no sooner do the poor hairlings(*) get anywhere near the soft terrain of the neck after spending months attached to that hard bony cranium shell, will a scissor appear out of nowhere and have their dreams cut short.
* -- (Freedom of Blogger Speech Act)

And the curiosity does not end here.When after years of such suppression, the hair community voice their protest by suicide uprootings, men start crying foul.
While some spend a fortune in having a whole new generation of hair replanted on their scalps, the less fortunate have to do with wigs which most often than not originates from hair gathered from numerous horse tails !!!!
Can you beat that ? While you have your own, pay to get them cut and when all is gone, get some from a creature who used them for swatting flies and covering his excreta orifice all his life.
We humans are truly unique.

I so wish people spent more time,being smart than trying to look smart.
The world would surely be a more beautiful place that way.

Felis silvestris catus

A week back, the CAT results were announced.

For those of you fortunate enough to not have had a brush with this monstrosity, CAT stands for Common Aptitude Test,something that these Indian Institute of Management blokes hold once every year to have a good laugh with the complete expense borne by the participating jokers.This time round there were nearly quarter of a million of these jokers who usually come from all walks of life for their 2 (now 2 and a half) hours of tryst with destiny.
CAT is something like the Daddy-promise to get the He-Man toy on your birthday if you stay good for the next six months and do your homework everyday and help your mother out in the kitchen and.....and .....(Parents always have their camouflaged win-win conditions. don't they ?). Anyway quite similarly, this bunch of jokers slog for their He-Mans to come and make life simpler for them or so they believe.

These jokers,and I'd restrain the discussions to the ones originating from the engineering sector, hereby referred to as Jawans, usually start talking about CAT during their first years in college with the firm decision that they'd specialize only in finance and nothing else when in all probability,their extent of knowledge about the financial world is comparable to Mallika Sherawat's affinity for clothes.

Gradually once the ragging period is over though and no one anymore feeds them with information of the type that Balubhai who sells eggs in the First hostel is also an electrical engineering passout from the same college, the Jawans usually ease out and dedicate the next three years in search of pornography in the internet.

Then comes June of final year ...its 5 months to CAT and many rediscover their long subdued passion for feenance.This time round the Jawans come armed with loads of Business world magazines and months of Economic Times which all of course goes to Balubhai who uses it to demarcate his omlettes from the half-frys. Red paper-Omlette, White Paper-Half Fry.
Simple rule of finance.

The poor souls lead a non engineer's life during the next few months trying to figure out things like who was Ramu's father if his second cousin was married to Sheela who had three daughters, all females one of whom was a school teacher and neither of her cousins Jatin and Rani were doctors. The lawyers in the family were not vegetarians and Deepika was the only ShahRukh Khan fan. Their pet dog Jimmy was allergic to vodka without any lime cordial and Ramesh and Jiten were not brothers!!!
They compare and analyse the sugarcane production, wool generation and alluminium output of 12 South American countries with bar diagrams, histograms, Chi-Square tests, normality tests and remaining sanity.
The hapless souls burn many a candle to try and figure out what Carl Gustav Jung meant to say when he spoke of integrating spirituality and appreciation of the unconscious realm and then deciding whether the tone of the author in the paragraph was fuzzy,pedantic,obstreperous or regressionist.Four unknown words as choices are all that he had till last year! This year they added the choice Confucian and so now Jawan has 5 choices to direct his destiny.

Jawan takes simulated exams named after all available species of Cats and by the time he reaches the actual exam hall on a nice November Sunday morning, he can barely remember his name and it is for this purpose that such cases are provided an Admit card with a name, photograph and address so that people can help these poor souls find their way back home.

What happens during the next three odd hours will certainly need another post so I am skipping that portion here.

A month or so from that Sunday ,the results are announced in a website and if you wished to see your score on the same day that the results are released, then you might as well type the website's address, press enter and accompany your mother to her long awaited trip to Amarnath and on the way back maybe make the visit to Rishikesh and Haridwar and then if you've washed away some of your sins of this life and the one previous to it,then you may be blessed with the home page of the IIM on your return.

Now you may click the link which says CAT 2006 results and doesn't Dad always talk about the Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry and the serenity there? So why not make that visit with family and the Rameswaram temple is something to be seen to be believed !!

While some Jawans come back from their trips, type in their CAT registration number, ask their mothers their date of birth, type that in and wait for their results to appear.................................some just wink and go on with their lives.
There are dogs too you know !

Miles to go before you sleep.....seriously dude!!

I am completely exhausted.
Times of India,Garfield comics 1981 strips,the complete analysis of India-SA tour on howzzat.com and a few hundred harmless scraps in orkut. How much more work can an average software engineer be expected to do in a single day anyway? I am no software geek and get tired very soon.

There are moments,albeit rare,when I sit back and try to plan out a future for myself.Every bachelor has the ability to do so but few exercise it and mostly all end up marrying ,in the process losing all control over their cognitive abilities.
Well this depletion of intelligence quotient in the world is God's way of maintaining His Supremacy upon humans and so be it.

Recently during one of those days when I am saddled with work in office with tough deadlines to meet (Read as :www.jigzone.com) I thought of taking a break and searching something cool in wikipedia and lo behold I came up with Chaos Theory. Extremely sexy name for a theory ..what say ?
This is what it had to say in wikipedia and I quote :

(Note: Please read slowly as it took me close to 3 hours 18 minutes to untangle the knot my poor little diminished brain had got itself in after reading the below paragraph at normal reading speed)

"In mathematics and physics, chaos theory describes the behavior of certain nonlinear dynamical systems that under certain conditions exhibit a phenomenon known as chaos. Among the characteristics of chaotic systems, described below, is the sensitivity to initial conditions (popularly referred to as the butterfly effect). As a result of this sensitivity, the behavior of systems that exhibit chaos appears to be random, exhibiting an exponential error dispersion, even though the system is deterministic in the sense that it is well defined and contains no random parameters."

In simpler terms, we call it marriage !

Now you may re-read the definition above with the help of the following appendix :

Chaos - Ask any husband.
Nonlinear dynamical systems - Wives.
Butterfly effect - Their hysteria at the supposed nosie you make while eating with your mouth open.
Contains no random parameters -Do not have any external claws or visible fangs
Exponential error dispersion -Read on.

He : "Hi Darling I'm back"
She : "Did you get the laundry?"
He : "Well...ahem...you know ..lets see...I got this chorlmint for you"
She : "So you been smoking all day"
He : "Oh no no...so whats for dinner today dear.Shall we eat out today..something with a candlelight maybe"
She : "Your mother called"
He : "Oh what did she say?"
She : "She was worried that I am starving her son to death"
He : "Ha ha ..did she say that ?"
She : "No she said that your sister cooked Chicken Do Pyaza for Jijaji"
He : "Well..so"
She : "Sniff ...sniff..sob"
He : "What ??"
She : "Sniff..Sob Sobb..."
He : "Oh cmon now darling ..dont cry..lets go out for dinner "
She : "So you really can't eat the food I cook isn't it? You think its junk"
He : "Hey cmon I never said that"
She : "Sob sob....sniff sniff ..I wish my mother was here for me...Can we get her for a month or two?"
He :"Well..ahem..you know.... a month..aa...yah why not" (Below belt attack ...not defended)
She :"Excellent.I called her up today afternoon and she is reaching by tomorrow morning's flight at 6:30 am.Please go get her from the airport.Now lets go out for dinner.Cmon hurry up darling!"

Game, Set, Match .............

I dedicate this post to a friend of mine , a particularly lively fellow with a good sense of humour about life.
He is getting married next week.
May his lively spirit rest in peace thereafter.
Amen.

Main Aisa Kyon Hoon -- Part I

There are moments in a software engineer's life when he suddenly realises that he has been staring at the computer screen for close to 14 minutes without any other activity,physical or mental accompanying this stare and it is precisely at these moments that he lets out an agonising wail which emanates from deep within but gets stifled somewhere near the throat for software engineers do not usually express opinions as long as the payslip arrives on the last working day of the month.

Immediately he sets out to get the feel of the Outlook Inbox and eventually manages to bring back circulation by sending out a few forwards and re-reading a few of his favourite oldies.
Memories of his college days flash by often making him sit up in surprise at the amount of activity that the familiar looking guy is doing running here and there for sponsorships,participating in debates, wild ad campaigns,Floyd sessions, canteen,organising the quiz papers and that immensely popular Treasure Hunt, taking time out for a few harmless flirts and yet passing those exams with fewer than expected hiccups. That certainly wasnt me,he wonders.

This following bit is just for information courtesy www.qrd.alzheimers.org.uk

"Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that results in the slow death of subsets of nerve cells in specific brain regions. The brain regions most affected are those involved in memory, recognition and personality, so resulting in dementia. Regions that are relatively spared are, for example, those for controlling movement. This is the reason why Alzheimer patients have memory problems but can walk and move normally, at least until the late stages of disease."

If one were to check about the contributing factors for this disease,I'm sure software engineering would be high on that list. No pun intended here.

This poor soul during those days of campus placements had no idea about the soup he had landed himself in, once his name was called out in that elite list of students.His joy was unbridled then.He had spent four years in the campus using the computer for very useful purposes such as games,pornography,movies,pornography,games,movies.
The day he joins his office, he sees hundreds of computers in front of him and again his joy is unparalleled.This is LAN where Age of Empire would thrive.Man this place rocks.
Fifteen minutes into that classroom which spoke of Pl-SQL,tables,queries,triggers and he politely stands up to leave the room for he surely is in a wrong room.Ha Ha ..these poor guys will have a tough time here,he smirks at the guys in the class.

The first rude shock : He is one of them.

The second rude shock : Computers are used for something called programming and not AOE.

The third rude shock : This is not a bad dream.

The fourth rude shock : This is really not a bad dream.

The fifth rude shock : There is a test day after.

The sixth rude shock : Lunch is postponed.

The seventh rude shock : The canteen is vegetarian.

The eighth rude shock : You cannot surf the internet in office.

The ninth rude shock : You have to sit till 8 for the lab session.

The tenth rude shock : This is only the first day in office.

Software morphing of personality in the next part.

The Dead Indian with lost Pride

May God be with all those departed and injured in the horrible horrible blasts.
As regards the perpetrators of this crime,I can only smile at their misfortune at having been born such.

When I wrote the blog below,little did I know that the people of Mumbai will be called upon to show their large heartedness so early and in such a tragic circumstance.
As regards shouts of Mumbai being back on its feet is concerned let us be smart enough to understand that the Mumbai people have not much choice but to go ahead with their lives. It has nothing to do with pride or resilience .
It is a mere question of hunger that drives them.Let the administration not bask in this 'glory' that things are all normal.
Can things be normal for the families of the over 200 dead ever? Are things normal because the people are using the same trains to travel and going about their daily work as before.Can we all sit back and relax at this 'normalcy'
I despise this spineless attitude we have ingrained within ourselves.Year after year and month after month our ineptitude is laid bare.When can we shove aside the political impotencies and expect the authorities to act; to act in such a manner that a fear is instilled within these inhumans.A fear which will make them shake at thoughts of hurting an Indian the next time.
All we have is the spirit of the citizens which is holding the country together.
Please let the ministers know that a few lakh rupees for the dead is not enough a price for lost Indian honour.More needs to be done. We cannot just board the same train the very next day , pat our backs at our courage and carry on with our lives as if nothing has happened .200 lives have been lost and many deformed for ever . Something has happened.Please remind yourself that something has happened.We must act and act now.
Strike or else never hold the pompous republic day parade any more for it only makes us hang our heads in shame.What purpose is all that pseudo might which cannot protect the citizens or does not bother to avenge the brutal murder of its citizens.Shame on us.

Our Prime Minister addresses the nation and says that India will not kneel in front of terror.
Please show him the photgraphs of limbless people affected in the blast. Forget kneeling , they have no legs left to walk.
Show him the headless body of the person and somebody please tell him that he has no more head to hold high for the growing economy which the Prime Minister says will not be affected because of the blasts.

Is India an identity only when we consider 110 crore people?Were the 200 people who died and the above thousand who were injured not India ?If they were and the world over is expressing their condolences for these Indians then Mr.Prime Minister ,we are kneeling and we are kneeling, be it in Mumbai, be it in Srinagar, be it in Coimbatore or be it in Delhi.We have knelt always in the face of these ruthless activities.
I feel sad today, very sad at my helplessness.

Reader's Undigest

We are the rudest proclaims a magazine because we dont pick up papers dropped by someone else, because we dont say thank you after our purchases and because we dont hold the door open for the person coming after us.
New York has the most courteous people on this earth and we in Mumbai have the least.
In other words,New York is the most polite city in the world and Mumbai the least.

Some statistical fodder for thoughts:
Reference :
http://newyork.areaconnect.com/crime1.htm"
Based on the latest available crime stats of New York of 2004 where Results were tabulated using the New York crime collection area population of 8,101,321, there were 226876 recorded crimes committed which includes highly impolite crimes such as murders,rapes,armed robberies,aggravated assaults,to more polite crimes such as burglaries, house and vehicle thefts.

Will the esteemed magazine care to explain how a city, where every third person in a group of 100 is a known criminal, be the politest city in the world ?
I wonder if the polite robbers of New York say thank you before leaving with their booty or hold the door open for the owner of the house to raise an alarm ?

This logic of comparing the survey results with the criminal data sheet of the area is highly stupid and irrational.I agree.
Similarly ridiculous are the tests taken as the benchmark to define the politness factor of a city.

Is the civil war initiated by the US in Iraq in the name of destroying non existent weapons of mass destruction not rudesness?
Does making the mockery of the United Nations and ordering air strikes anywhere in the world not amount to rudeness?
Does cheap political manipulation by a country leading to a Rwandan massacre or a Somalian civil war amount to good manners?
If not, then a magazine which has its headquarters in that very 'polite city' which orchestrates the above , will do well enough to not take up utterly stupid surveys and voice a biased opinion that people around the world have grown tired listening.

Let these 'polite people' of New York with a per capita income of $40,507 come to Mumbai and try to make a living with the city's per capita income of Rs 48954 which is atually more than 3 times that of the national average and then pick up a fallen paper on the street.
Let them face a reality where a missed local train may mean spending the day hungry for some, where many a 15 people live in a space meant for 2 and then say thank you for their daily purchases which include a piece of bread and nothing else.
Let them hold open a door for the person after them in a city where survival is a matter of pure instinct.

Politeness cannot be measured by a universal constant for many social and demographic factors group together to shape a persons expressions.When Mumbai was flooded last year, people from all hues of life came together and brought back the city to its feet.People formed human chains to transfer many for trapped homes.
Lives were lost to save others.Thank you may not have been said always but was expressed in more than just words.Still Reader's Digest calls us rude.
People travelling 3 hours each day to reach home in a jampacked Mumbai local have a smiling face while forsaking their seats to a stranger who is feeling unwell .Yet Readers Digest calls us rude.
People in a city like Mumbai live with their hearts in their sleeves and a 10 minute walk from Victoria Terminus to ChurchGate will make you realise that.

We know what we are and we dont need any magazine to give us lessons in manners.
We may not say thank you on making a purchase , we may not pick up papers dropped by someone else and we may not hold the door open but we will surely help a stranger in an accident to the hospital.

Let us continue to express ourselves in more genuine acts of good manners than those set as a benchmark by Reader's Digest.
Let us demarcate ourselves with our Indian genuineness.

Is Raat ki Subha Nahi ....

Those of you who were not born as the Khandani Rayees with 257 acres of farmland and a few hundred Aaam ka Bagichaas,with seven people turning up when you shouted Raamu ......or if you were unfortunately born with no lineage of tribes or castes and have been deprived of the priviliges under articles 46,243D,243T,330,332 and a few more of the haloed Indian constitution,then in all probability you would have taken an overnight bus journey sometime or the other.....

Well I recently took one to Edinburgh...the first one outside my country.....It was a 10 hour journey with a gap of an hour in between which is provided to do the same things as we do in India.Well almost.

The journey started with the driver announcing in the most pleasant tone he had ,that he was very pleased to have me on board .....which got me real worried for a minute and that he wished that I had a nice and comfortable experience travelling with National Express which then relaxed me quite a bit for though the English are corny at times with their language, they usually refrain from drawing similarities of their personal abilities to something that has a national reference.

I settled down and took out my chappals,red pyjamas,blankets,Dabur Dant Manjan,a severely chewn blue brush, yellow towel,pink comb,Ponds cold cream,Air Pillow,the polythene with the oil stained Aloo ki sabzi and Brown Bread ..No Mummy...No Roti... ....Oh did I forget to say that these guys also have a toliet within the bus and you are well allowed to get the same feeling of satisfaction as you do you in Ganga Tapti Mail,holding the train handle and completing your duty towards Nature.....
Well Almost

The bus was kind of empty and after a quick Pao-from-the-Burger-and-Bhaji-from-my-polythene dinner,I said my daily prayers to Wills Navy Cut at the next bus station and thought of grabbing some sleep.I took out my socks which were really cross with me as they weren't worn long enough to give them the fragrance of 33 dead rotten mice intestines and strecthed out to all the the four seats which came within the longitudinal ambit of my 175cm body.I pushed the seats in front of me a little ahead much to the dislike of the English lady who pushed them back again .After doing this for seventeen times ,she fell asleep in exhaustion and I got my space.Persistence is something we Indians are so exceptionally brilliant at ..So what Mandal bill wasnt passed in 1989...so what we lost bright lives to stop its implementation then ...it will be passed in 2006 ...Hail Democracy !!

Well I was almost asleep and the dreams for the night were just beginning their castings after the "Vicco turmeric ...nahi Cosmetic" commercial, when I was jolted back to my senses.I was suffocating.My whole breathing mechanism had taken a cue from the State Bank employees and were seeming to go on a strike.I sat up and took huge gulps of air.For a moment,I had this feeling again .....when the whole world flashes before your eyes...I have read in some guidance books that this is a sign of your impending death.The last time I had a similar experience was when I saw Kareena Kapoor in Main Prem Ki Deewani Hoon attempting some heavy emotional scene and simultaneously make a face which betrayed complete Baboon lunacy.
This time someone had just farted within the bus and in the name of the father and the son and the holy Ghost, I have not smelt hell, but it could not be worse.
I felt like a guinea pig trapped in a container closed from all sides being injected with lethal cyanide-like air shots.I cried in desperation but the bus had no windows for it was a centrally heated one and boy someone had just added to the heat.
I survived again.Well Almost.

The Dreams cried foul too and packed off for the day... There were to be no more shows unless proper ventilation measures are taken ...they said before leaving .The only one smiling after this were my pair of socks...Damn this species !!!

No sooner had my eyes closed ,when the driver politely announced that we would be taking a short and refreshing break now .The bus would be kept open and all items left in the bus were at the mercy of werewolves,vampires and a few robbers and that we may not worry about the same.It was bloddy 3 a.m. in the morning ...This English politeness kills me .

This country is an advanced one as we all know.Their toilets are spick and span,their mirrors dont have the Birju loves Maina written with the pink lipstick over them...and I was so thrilled so see such a lovely washroom in a bus station that I nearly forgot the purpose of my visit there.Just like the Brits...They are so infatuated with procreation here that they just forget to go the entire distance.The population of UK including England,Wales,Scotland and Ireland and whatever lands that come under this not so united kingdom ,sums up to a little over 6 crores....and let me tell you that the 3 for a pound Condom vending machine within the toilets is certainly not helping matters much .....

After the well avoided refreshment, I fell off to sleep again ....Just as you too might have ,if you have read this far ....
baki ki kahaani kabhi baad me ....bore ho gaya type karte karte ...

Chitti aayee hain ....

I have been trying to attend to my severely malnourished blog for quite some days now.....and I must admit that the attempts have been pretty ridiculous at best.

But today I am about to write about something,the very thought of which may affect many people with violent internal physical reactions where the long intestine tries to strangulate the smaller one leading to highly abnormal behavior by the orifices of the gastro intestinal tract; it may affect some with severe psychotic disorders characterized by wild hallucinations where they visualize pale kings and warriors and slaves all with starved lips and parched looks betraying a deep sense of loss or pain .So please read at your own risk .

I wish to talk about a scene when you wake up in the morning,waste about 5 and three fourth minute in the bathroom,get dressed ...spray the anti-perspirant ....hail the cab....reach the office...log on to your system with the stage all set for the day's activity to begin and then,just as you are about to click on the Outlook icon on your desktop, you see a small note fluttering near the cubicle which says in bold

"We are currently experiencing problems with email servers KINMLVEM03 and KINMLVEM04.
We will notify you once this problem has been resolved.
On behalf of the IT Department
Thank you"

You just sit back in disbelief...Your world just comes crushing down and you are left helpless in this rude sinister world all alone to fend for yourself bereft of the company of the Sri Ganesha mail which I could not forward today to 20 people within 3 minutes of receiving it ,thus losing out on a very needed promotion,without the morning mail from Subhash with the word Paplu in the subject lines which makes me aware and deeply regret that I missed out on some photographs of some very worthy female who was not afraid to show us what God had sent her with.

This is a catastrophe of a very high degree and this has happened to me today.

What is a software engineer's life without a mailbox....May God spare me from hell for these sacrilegious thoughts ..but I sometimes wonder.
What would have happened had the messages in the mailboxes been delivered by the concerned peoples themselves at everyones desk.Imagine 33 people standing in a queue in front of your cubicle coming one after the other trying desperately to wish you a good morning .Some have come with flowers,some with small rascal puppies in their hands..some are standing with a landscape making you realise that you can never go there with your company's salary but can always be wished a very good morning with it .....some have come with Keats himself ..blah blah blah..
Once you have digested the smelly Upma with the watery tea of the canteen and courteously replied good morning to all dogs,poets,snakes,bears and mountains comes the chance of the daily dosage of Thoughts of the Day.

Story 1#
An old wizened gentleman maybe 123 years of age ,comes and makes himself comfortable in the chair near the server and speaks of how his son is in jail for murdering a chicken in Maneka Gandhi's garden and how with great intellect he helped his old father in digging up his garden sitting within those jail premises..This old man comes every week to tell me the same story again and again...Seems to be a very popular hitch hiker in forward mails...this gentleman.....Man some parents can be real panicky about their children's acheivements..I tell you.......I still remember Ankit's mother attempting to put up an article in the local newspaper after the poor soul came second in the sack race in class II.....
I shifted this old man from the server to the Delete button and the last I heard of him was that he was blissfully travelling amongst the Recycle Bin files amazing the .bug files with tales of his son's chivalry...

Moral of the story : Meet the Parents but leave the Focker's alone

Story 2 #
Two poultry farmers in very high spirits came with their bottles of ale.They also invited my project manager to join thier mirth.They told us of how their hens had suddenly become fertile after they had the bright idea of changing the cock.They were patting their own backs as for the first time their wives too had taken the cue and done the same.

Moral : Never equate wives with hen and always drink beer.

After them,came a crow and a rabbit teaching us valuable management lessons,
Then a turkey's sister came and touched our hearts with the story of how her brother was mercilessly shot by a hunter on a tree top.When we asked her ,how he reached such a height she said a bull friend of theirs had helped his brother gain the strength by allowing him to have the nutrients of his droppings.

Moral :Bullshit might get you to the top, but it won't keep you there.

Soon we had people from all departments involved....the HRD, the Finance guys ,the hardware people ..everyone was looking into the problem of one person or the other , one animal or the other ...A team of 4 people were sent onsite to Uganda to do a project on searching an uncle who had recently died leaving $23 million to our Account manager's name .
The HR guy spent the afternoon running around the whole office trying to shooo away the fox who came to declare the quarterly profits....some said it was the personifiation of the CFO's mail .....only few disbeleived ...
Amidst all this chaos,when everyone was chasing away someone or the other,the peon replaced the fluttering notes with the latest one which had just been faxed from the corporate office.....It read

The issue with email servers has not been resolved.Please leave for the day as it has just been informed that one of our very esteemed clients has had a very productive hour long meeting with four managers only to be later learnt that the four were infact four ignorant donkeys who had come to narrate the poor story of their exploitation, to one of the employees.This fact will however not be conveyed to the esteemed client who was very pleased with the meeting outcome and has agreed to do business with our company...Let us all work together and take the company to ne.........................blah blah blah ...and more blah blah .....
Sent on behalf of Corporate to the IT Department
Thank you

This is a place where I work. Nice place it is ...What say ???

A Friendly conversation

My favourite pastime while in Mumbai apart from introducing amazing bugs in existing software applications of my project was swatting mosquitoes.However offensive it may sound to the Mosquito community and its a very strong one let me tell you,it gave me an uncanny pleasure to see the smashed carcass of this extremely dangerous animal plastered against the light creamish or maybe offwhitish background of a not so dirty wall.

I share this fascination with quite a few world leaders such as our very own Mahatma Gandhi who was the worst affected primarily because of his aversion to anything remotely familiar with cloth. Classified files (mostly leaked) say that what people later came to know as the Dandi march was actually initiated by one such mosquito bite on a cold wintry night which so infuriated the elderly gentleman that he thought of taking a fast and spending his remaining life in the Arabian Sea with whales and jelly fishes and had infact set out from his Ashram to this effect.People joined him in his protest and as it always happens in India where plans never work out,they ended up making salt instead.

Richard Nixon was perennially harrassed by a specially trained female Cuban biter of XXIVth Bay of Pigs Squadron.In her biography named "Water through those Gates" ,she writes of her fascination for the President's soft bottom and unhygeinic habits of leaving his litter uncleaned.Though Gerald Ford who succeeded Nixon pardoned him for all his offences, one particular female of the Culex genera could never forgive him for prematurely vacating the White House washrooms as she took an oath of never falling for any US President's bottom ever.The last we heard, was that she was ceremoniously discharged of her sevices,decorated with the Iron Cross by Fidel Castro himself.She leads a quiet life today teaching the younger generation from her new book titled "Ek Choti Si Love Story",which I have learnt has been made into a highly unacclaimed and very unsuccessful film in India with the same title.

Every organism has some part to play in the bio ecological system of Nature or so I thought.Thus after spending a particularly painful hour plucking out nostril hairs on a very mundane Saturday evening ,when I was presented with an interview slot with the extremely busy and well decorated Mosquito General Mr.T in charge of Extremely smelly Armpits and waxy Earlobes infantry division Thane Shakha, I was naturally thrilled.
(For the general information of those who bother to know,Mumbai mosquitoes are named after the English alphabets as the average lifespan of members of the Mumbai Mosquito Branch is 26 days ,slightly above the national average of 23.24 courtesy the great help provided by the inactive sewage cleaning services of the Brihan Mumbai Municipalty corporation.Mosquitoes of Balia and Golaghat are named after Chinese alphabets owing to some similar reasons as stated above.)
Having never had the honour of interviewing a defense personal before,I was naturally apprehensive and arrived sharp on time as scheduled at 6:24 p.m. behind the Kitchen door ,underneath the wet mopper ,within the third hole from the top of my once discarded and profusely smelly brown socks.

Me : "Ahem ,Mr T Good Evening,Honoured to meet you Sir"
Mr T : "Aha Mr.Dasgupta a very Good evening to you,so how has your left armpit been doing of late? I hope my men are taking good care of it "
Me : "Indeed Sir.I had a particularly big pinkish inflammation yesterday evening caused by two of your men's bites ....er...expeditions...you know.... Are you by any chance using stronger toxins and anticoagulants these days ?"
Mr T: "Oh yes we recently recieved the best quality ones from the drains of Khiddirpore you know ....Its tough to get the undiluted ones these days...(Sighs)...A lot of corruption has come within our ranks as well...Its only day before that one of our colonels from the Andheri Brigade was drain marshalled after he was caught red handed sleeping on a Good Night mattress...."
Me : "Oh what a shame.Sir would you like to tell me something about your illustrious career spanning a long 22 days "
Mr T : "Its funny you know , when I look back on my larvaehood days.My mother used to regale me with stories of how I was brilliantly conceived on a particularly moist neck of a Pao Bhaji seller within the vendors compartment of the 6:49 Virar local packed with a total count of 33251 types of animal species.My father seems to have heroically flown over furious rivulets of hot steamy sweat and managed to seduce my mother just as the train crossed the Dharavi slums"
Me : "Oh how fascinating,it must have been for your mother"
Mr T : "Yes (Sighs)... she was a brave Mosquito.I decided to join the defense forces the day I was born alongwith my twenty three thousand five hundred and fifty two other brothers and sisters."
Me : "Oh how chivalrous of you, and I hear that you soon rose very swiftly in the ranks courtesy that amazing proboscis of yours which can even penetrate the thick skinned Patels of Dalal Street...Is it true Sir ?"
Mr T : " Oh ...(smiles and some blushing)..."
Me :" Sir any particular reason to choose my flat as your bastion now ..Of course you are most welcome Sir ..but was naturally curious as regards my good deeds of my previous birth to have earned such an honour "
Mr T " Oh no not at all..on the contary the honour is all mine Mr.Dasgupta..Where else could we find such a rich natural source of continuos carbon dioxide,lactic acid and vegetation than within those immensely fertile armpits of yours"
Me : " Ahem ..Er...Sir, what are those medals for that you are wearing?"
Mr T : "(Smiles and more blushing)...This red one here is a personal favourite you know.I got it for blood sucking the entire Agarwalla family of Flat 102 Block C and the other one you see here is also special as Mr Chinchpokli was very drunk that night and the liquor had begun to get on to my head after the first two bites.However I carried on bravely and managed three more bites....I did bang myself nastily against his huge tummy....he he ....Ah....those bygone days ...........Anyway Mr.Dasgupta ,it has been a real pleasure sharing these special moments with you ,but I must take your leave now as I have to conduct a Special Green Belt Certification program on " The terrains of a Bihari wasteline: Risks and Mitigation plans "

Mr T bowed and flew down to the pool of the stagnating dog pee in the first floor steps where this certification program was to be held.

I switched on my TV and lay back with a sense of complete satisfaction.
I had just realised that Project Managers among mosquitoes too actually do nothing and they share the same Family name with all other PMs of every other species known to mankind.
Viz. "Basicallio Bekaris"

Dellu and Billu ki shaitani


When you start your laptop and the progress bar meant to keep a watch on the boot up of your Windows XP Operating systems thinks of taking a stroll each time to the far ends of the Galaxy for a cup of hot cofee with Cleopatra and returning at its own sweet will ,sometimes even stopping by to watch Aurora borealis from the hilltops of Jupiter...you know theres something wrong with either the lap or the top on it ....

My laptop is ill for the past few days and you feel really sorry to watch her in her pitiable condition. She is hardly a month and a half of age but having seen highly X rated stuff which took me the whole of adoloscence to find ,I must say she is mature way beyond those numerals signify.
Anyway coming back to her illness ,I assume she is going through some gastro intestinal problems and the bloody quacks here have made life worse for both her and me.
Initially her problem was limited to some continuos gurgling sound when fed with music files.But when the gurgles soon turned to gargantuan belches,I put the problem over net to seek advice from the doctors who spend their noble lives in the selfless task of solving any sort of computer ailments from psychedelic crashes caused by an overdose of pornographic downloads to minor problems such as traffic disorders caused by buses and their drunk drivers who practise racing on Lappy's mother's boards.
Anyway the noble doctors had a heated discussion with solutions ranging from importing some latest chipset from the Ethiopian black market to sending hate mails to Bill Gates saying "I really really hate you Bill".

One very dedicated noble person also wrote this :
"Capacitors help manage electricity flow on motherboards."(What Blasphemy !!!)" When capacitors don't work properly, you can probably imagine what happens : meltdown. Ultimately, many motherboards go bad when the capacitors burst and leak brownish goo. Can you see that ?"I strained my eyes for close to 16 minutes to notice any such behaviour but to no avail.I guess Dell does teach their automated children to have better sanitary habits than that.

After much deliberation, sanity prevailed and it was suggested that I reinstall Windows Media Player version 10 from the official site of Microsoft which i had already done 3 and a half dozen times by then .

My friends who call themselves software engineers thought of coming to my "rescue".People at onsite mostly are a frustrated lot primarily because tissues take precedence over water, but that is no reason to take it out on my poor lappy.A Virus Hatao Andolan ensued and downloaded were hundreds of Anti Virus Sprays alongwith Sweet Shirley Flea and Tick Powder and Happy Jack Flea-Tick Powder II.These idiots are infatuated with bugs ,I tell you.
Each of these idiots (the married ones are dumber man !!) kept their Yahoo Messenger windows open so that any latest medication for my lappy's condition is instantly available to them or thats what they told me.Wonder what hairless_ball_01 or luckless_virgin prescribed ,but all these efforts finally took its toll.

Lappy has stopped speaking to me .I tried pleasing her with a specially pirated DVD of Rang De Basanti but after 11 minutes I realised that either I had bought the Deaf and Dumb version of the movie or My Laptop had upgraded herself for Bats or Humpback whales or maybe Bottlenose Dolphins who can hear the ultrasound frequency.

My absence from the bloggers park may be attributed to manifold reasons ranging from Ismail Haniya's hair loss to the abysmal un-"conscience-vote" by the British House of Commons to implement a full smoking ban in all enclosed public places in England from Summer 2007, but this hiatus is primarily because of my poor lappy's condition.

Here's wishing her a speedy recovery and a fervernt appeal to all the softwares engineers to take the pledge to never fiddle with their friend's laptops ever again even when they have nothing better to do than take a hyena census in the Savannahs.

Inglease ................

My first principal was an Australian.....He was a funny chap whom we lovingly called Uncle Sir.Now Uncle Sir was in love with the Queen's language and would go all the way to make us understand that a gerund and a giraffe were not exactly cousins !!!This was in those days when my mom went to drop me to school holding me with her right hand with no more respect than she did the Bazaar ki thaili in the other......I remember R.B stores ..the bakery shop where there was an uncle who used to give me free biscuits to munch ....Its fun munching free biscuits you know .Wonder why Manoj Bajpai said "Kya main kutta hoon kya" in the movie Road when Ms.Mali offered him a few ? Uncouth chap he was !

Haan so we were on the verge of discussing my Australian principal when another very interesting character comes to mind .This guy was from my second school ..No they didnt kick me out of the first ...my Bapuji got transferred and quite a few of my possible and prospective romantic comtemplations met an untimely death......I took it in a very manly way and did not shed a single tear..Within 27 days I had scratched a hideous S in my left hand with the compass expressing my enduring love for a female whose name i cannot fully recollect today. That Ms. S never gave me a penny's worth of attention were all bad rumours spread by jealous classmates.......This character's name,whom I wish to mention here, was Mr.Hajra and he was supposed to be our Physical education teacher ...By the way he never gave the education we wanted though and it was left to those magazines of the genre "They who must not be named" to be our guardians during those tender ages of 13 or 14. Now this guy carried a huge Danda with him (of the Udham Singh species but a little shorter )and especially targetted the soft bottoms of innocent children like us.His lack of respect for our bottoms however earned him no fame and soon there were cat calls behind his back with a minute grammatical modification of his name which disoriented his very sexual direction or lack of them.I learnt the first lessons of morphing in my school toilet walls.
Now there was a daily inspection in our school to see if everyone had dug their noses clean , to check if the number of lice in our hairs had not increased the school defined quota of 18 per male student head and 224 per female strand and quite a few other things one of which also included the particulars of the tie .
Now in the sweltering heat of the summers my tie on that particular day was just a little more attracted to gravity than as had been defined by late Mr Newton.
So Mr.Hajra blocks the school gate with his Udham and asks me " You boy !! Why tie not tie ?" and gave my bottom a shot which had brought out the choiciest of expletives from the poor thing...I read the following day that my Australian principal in Shillong had had a mild stroke at around the same time of this incident.

I traversed a few more years which brought me and my father to our first visit to Gujarat to get me admitted to an engineering college or thats what they had told me in the college brochure ....(Psst....its still says so...Ha ha ha )
The long journey had us ravished and craving for anything that barely resembled food to the Bengali tongue.Little did we realise that where we went in to pacify our stomachs was actually an illegal den where they smuggled the rarest of South Indian reptiles and sold them to KK (thats what every smuggler is named isnt it ?)
But I was very smart and told my Pops that we shouldn't indulge in such activities promptly showing him the menu which read in bold "SOUTH INDIAN SNAKES"
The goon looking guy with the moustache who sat for all transactions at the entrance said in Hindi...Are sir Snacks nahi maloom kya ..Naashta...South Indian Naashta !!! and gave us a comtemptous smile .......Son and father looked at each other ruing their lack of knowledge.My Australian principal who was critically ill after the afore mentioned incident of my school left us for his heavenly abode soon after.

Today here in England ,I feel the same as a Togo Island native would if he were asked to coordinate a conference of the Vogons of the Hitchhiker's fame.
I simply can't understand what they call English.It is more heavily accented than my Granny's pickles were with all that mustard oil. After four months here i have understood that " Venjacumhey " actually is a question which enquires about the time when i reached a particular place where the person asking this has already been present for some time prior to my being there.
Grammar that i never learnt from Mr Wren and Mr.Martin doesnt seem to have an existence here.

But at the end of the day you can just sit back and pat yourself saying "Awrite mate We savaieefd anotha day here.
May the soul of my Uncle Sir rest in peace for he was a nice person and never targetted the soft bottoms of 12 year olds.

Vilayat se..........

England, the country which is so much a part of the Indian psyche.
It starts from the pages of that Indian History text book of class 6 amazing us with tales of Indian chivalry and bravado in fighting off the firangs.From Lala Lajpat Rai to Bhagat Singh,Gandhi to Bose,the Unknown to the Unheard....We fought for and gained our freedom or thats what we learnt in those history books.What happened thereafter is just anyones guess.... Anyway without anymore sounding like the 44 year old painter working as a High court clerk,I wish to pen down something about my days in this country of firangs where strangely they do not anymore shout 'Kutte' at us in an accent which makes Hindi sound like Crocodile fart,nor do not carry whips or wear those wooden hats ..... :-(

Daru aur unginat Budhdhe
This is a strange society though.Quite contrasting at times.The old roam around in Tobu cycle sized scooters which move at say 5 miles an hour while the young are bred on a mixture of concentrated Hydrochloric Acid and AntiIce.
The old are sedate.the young are Punk Shit !!The old are gentle ,The young are Football.The old man sits in the town centre with a paper in hand and some memories,whereas the number of times the young would say Fuck in a single sentence would make one imagine as if its been injected through hypnopædia in their systems.But I must say that one thing all generations revere and hold in the highest esteem is Beer.These English are fishes when it comes to drinking Beer.There is no beating them and surely Keshto Mukherjee must have had British lineage.

Ruk kyon Gaye ......Bajao
My ears are parched to hear the sound of horns in cars.It is assumed to be impolite to bray the horn here and should be considered equivalent to a 'Behen**** kya mera hi gaadi mila tha marne ko', if you are lucky enough to get a horn to your name.

Sahab ..kharcha paani
I recently visited a government office here for some National Insurance number..I met with hospitality and courteousness there and damn it, not a single person forwarded his greasy palm to me for the 5 pounder note.My reaction to it was quite similar to what Evander Holyfield's would have been, had Tyson said "May i bite them please?"

Food. The Lunch plate.....
A mound of mashed Potatoes brimming with the Nobel it got for dumbness.
Some green substances possibly some fern or moss and ...and nothing !!
Thats it ..Well did you expect more .This breed of people have an amazing lack of tastebuds and a bounty of obesity.
Tuntun too must have been British .......

Well its a funny place to be honest....

An Introduction to foolishness

This bloke that you see below is Yours truly .....The look but confirms the fat ass pseudo intellectualism that is so inherent within that fat head of mine .......Of course the Arjun Rampalish hairdo is no longer there. A bloke in Southall(aka Punjab of UK) murdered all those with the swirl of some machine which marauds poor hairs in such a manner that would have put German concentration camps to shame..This guy calls himself a barber and I even paid £5 to have this murder done .... What a shame ....Of course he had warned me enough as the person who came for a hair cut just prior to me saw his Empire of Hairs raised to dust in exactly 1 min and 22 secs and all that was left was a barren field as if bereft of the Indian monsoons ,parched ,dry yet expectant.

First look into this Bloggers Park .....We have a strike

The stage meanders from the days when I fought over lost marbles through the nights spent discussing the lunatic from Floyd's album.From the days when the only trigger i knew was the one that Rajnikanth or was it Mithunda who pulled the same to split a single bullet into two,killing both the fleeing villians instantenously.(Spelling thik hain na?) "Dhishoom" was all that was required to fire this slightly curved object.Today a trigger (not curved) is ruining my life for it just refuses to update some godforsaken table in some far corner of my personal computer which itself is a misnomer for this very personal thing of mine is repeatedly accessed and ravaged by 1400 other personal computers over the day.In civil terms they call it networking or some shit.
Now this trigger is behaving as an old obstinate mule with constipation, or as the Bai of my Mumbai flat on a rainy day would .They just wont work !

There was a time when the notion of this table for me was where a small and happy family (From the Pyar Hua Ikraar Hua ad shown over DD)used to sit to have a cozy dinner of daal roti and chawal.
Windows was an outlet in a room through which I dreamt of my future ,saw myself flying fighter planes bombarding enemy posts to precision,scoring 114 runs in 40 balls and then capturing 4 wickets in 2 overs and then the final catch which wins India the world cup. And today corruption has seeped into even the small crevices of my table where even the nastiest of termites would have bet quarter a pound to reach and would you imagine all my windows were paralysed .Doston ne kahan ke Hang ho gaya. Is this what they call development, hanging poor harmless windows.

So they wont work either !

A primary key was the one my Thamma (granny) used to keep knotted over her saree's pallu.It was a huge key by all streches of imagination,one old rusted piece of iron which I felt had no worthwhile purpose for it wouldnt open a lock in thirty three thousand forty nine years but if the poor thing was misplaced, then all hell broke loose.

Somewhere along the line the meanings changed.
This corruption of my table and my trigger in my very personal but available computer was all initiated by some such stupid key and thus Its a Total Strike today in this day of a software engineer squatting at his client location wondering just where did things go wrong !!!!!!

I also know how to add a link in this page YAHOOOOOOO !!!!!!
Rediff.com
...........................Or Rediff Whatever